What the Hell?
by paredescolombia
Summary: Hyde and Jackie have been best friends for years, but Hyde has to admit to himself that he is in love with her. Hyde's never shared the inner workings of his heart and mind with anyone, except Jackie. Now, he doesn't know what to do. Hiatus.
1. Protecting an angel

**Chapter 1 – Protecting an angel. **

My name is Hyde. Steven James Hyde. I had always known that I was destined to be alone, and my family history only confirmed it as inevitable. My so-called father walked out on my mother and me when I was four-years-old.

I had actually been naïve enough to believe that the son of a bitch would come back. I could still remember waking up in the middle of the night screaming for him with tears running down my face. My so-called mother would always walk into my room and tell me to shut the fuck up and go back to sleep.

I would always end up crying myself to sleep, until one day I slept through the night. I accepted that my father wasn't coming back and as time went on I found myself wondering when my mother would do the same damn thing, in the back of my mind I started wishing that she would leave. Edna always treated me like shit. She would always take out all of her anger and frustration out on me, and I wouldn't say a Goddamn thing to her. I mean what the fuck was I supposed to say to her?

I felt so vulnerable and I started to realize as time went on that if I wanted to survive the cruelties of the fucked up world I lived in, I needed to become a cold-hearted person. That was a really shitty conclusion to come to at such a young age, at any age.

Eric Foreman and I met on the first day of kindergarten. He was getting his ass handed to him by a pretty little red-headed girl, Donna Pinciotti. I managed to stop her from sitting on his head and making him eat dirt, so I told him that I would continue protecting him from her if he gave me a quarter every day. He readily accepted my proposal and I walked him home after school that day.

That same afternoon as I was getting ready to walk away from the Foremans' household, I heard his parents' voices, my curiosity got the best of me and I decided to stick around. Right off the bat I could see how much love Mrs. Foreman had towards her son, it was evident in her eyes and my heart swelled up when she directed that same loving look at me. The feelings that bubbled up inside me were completely foreign to me. Mr. Foreman, on the other hand, seemed like a man who prided himself by intimidating the hell out of his son, but strangely enough, I could still see how much he loved him. Mrs. Foreman's motherly nature and her husband's hard exterior, but loving interior were things I craved more than anything in the world, so I continued walking Eric home.

Every day, Eric and I would enter the Foreman household and get pulled into a bone-crushing hug by Mrs. Foreman. Afterward, she would send us off into their basement with a plate piled high with chocolate-chip cookies and tall glasses of milk; we would watch random television shows for a few hours, and the Foremans would always invite me to eat dinner with them before I would walk myself home.

Every single time I had to walk home, I always had an overpowering sense of dread in the pit of my stomach. I knew what awaited me whenever I arrived. I had long ago grown accustomed to walking into the house to find my mother fucking one of my many uncles on our couch. I would walk directly into my bedroom undetected, hoping to drown out their constant moaning and groaning. I didn't want to hear my mother begging for her latest conquest to go deeper, faster, and harder. She would scream out in pleasure completely oblivious to the fact that her only son could hear everything; then again she probably wouldn't give a fuck either way. Sometime around midnight the screen door would crash closed, announcing that my uncle had finally decided to go home to his wife and children.

A few years later, it became easier for me to find different ways to distract myself. I would use any excuse I could find to stay the hell out of my house until I knew that I didn't risk being further traumatized with the disgusting scenes that my mother loved to be the star of.

I was finally happy; at least I was for a few hours every day.

When I was eleven-years-old, I started attending Point Place Middle School with my friends Eric, Donna and Michael Kelso.

I met Jackie Burkhart on my third day of school. I spotted her behind the gymnasium; she was being pushed against the wall by Jonathan Sanders and Elijah Scott. She was the most beautiful girl that I had seen in my entire life. She had tears streaming down her cheeks and it tugged on my heart strings, a heart I had long forgotten existed. She seemed so fragile, so breakable, and so innocent.

An overpowering rage bubbled within me towards those fucking retards and I felt an overwhelming want to beat their asses to a pulp. I ran towards Jonathan, grabbing him by his neck and throwing his ass on the ground before he had the opportunity to register what the hell was going on. I didn't hesitate before I grabbed Elijah and shoved him against the wall, the fear in his eyes resembling the fear in the eyes of the raven-haired beauty. I glared at Elijah before turning my attention towards Jonathan.

"I swear to God that if either of you two idiots comes anywhere near her again, I make sure that both of you lose the ability to walk. Do you understand me?" I couldn't stop the venom from dripping in my voice as I spoke. I looked at Jonathan and waited for him to nod in agreement before looking at Elijah and waiting for him to do the same. I waited for the two of them to leave before turning my attention to the scared little girl that had cowered behind a brick wall. I carefully walked over to where she was, making sure not to scare her anymore in the process. "Hey, are you okay?"

She looked at me, and I noticed for the first time that her eyes were two completely different colors, but instead of hindering her beauty, all it did was heighten it. One of her eyes was a sea blue, while the other one was an emerald green. I didn't know in that moment, but one day I would wish more than anything that I could stare into those miss-matched eyes for the rest of my life. "Y-yes, I am. Thank you."

A small smile made its way across her facial features, and I couldn't stop myself from giving her a small smile of my own. "Don't worry about it; you have nothing to thank me for."

She dropped her gaze and I saw that her smile disappeared instantly. I couldn't help but feel a sudden sense of guilt for making her frown. I was moments away from apologizing to her for treating her in such a dismissive way, but she spoke before I got the chance to. "Okay. Well, my name is Jackie. Jackie Burkhart. What's your name?"

"My name is Hyde." Her eyebrows crinkled in confusion and I couldn't help but smirk. "My name is Steven, but everybody always calls me Hyde."

She held out her hand for me to shake. "It's nice to meet you, Steven."

I started into her beautiful miss-matched eyes and I couldn't help but notice how confident she seemed. There wasn't a trace of the frightened little girl who had cowered behind a brick wall mere minutes. She had called me "Steven." Mr. and Mrs. Foreman had been the only ones who had referred to me by my first name, but when she had said my name it sounded like angels were singing. I honestly didn't know what it was about her, but she had an uncanny ability to capture my attention like no one else. I didn't know what was happening to me in that moment, but it seemed like meeting her meant something more, something I couldn't really place. I had enough friends and I had a reputation to maintain. There was no way in hell that a raven-haired angel-wait, what the fuck? There was no fucking way that a stupid little girl who didn't know how the hell to defend her-own-damn-self from two idiot school boys would ruin everything I had worked so Goddamn hard to get. I was happy with the way things were, at least I thought I was. "Yeah, okay, but like I said before, everybody calls me Hyde."

"I'm not like everybody else, Steven."


	2. We're not little kids anymore

**Chapter 2 - We're not little kids anymore.**

"Oh, my God! Steven, stop being such an overprotective idiot." I had spent the greater part of my Saturday morning hanging out with Jackie at her house because once again her air-headed parents had left her to fend for herself for the weekend. Honestly, I couldn't think of anywhere else I would rather be, but the conversation that we had started twenty minutes ago had started to piss me off.

"Jackie, you're overreacting." I tossed myself back on her mattress with her teddy bear landing softly on my chest. "I'm looking out for you, you can't blame me for trying to protect you." She couldn't. Jackie Burkhart had been my best friend for six years, since the day that I had stopped two fucktards from messing with her. Foreman would probably shit a brick and start bitching and complaining if her heard me say that, reminding me that he's supposed to be my best friend, but it doesn't change anything. "I don't see why you're attacking me!"

"I'm not trying to attack you, Steven, but you're attacking someone I really like!" I knew that she was starting to get mad at me and my idiotic behavior, but I couldn't help it. I didn't really know why it was bothering me so fucking much that she was showing interest in some dicktard, but it was.

"Jackie, you have got to be kidding me! Until two weeks ago, you didn't even know who the hell Noah Collins was, yet here you are attacking me to defend him." I could tell by her expression that I might have gone a little bit to far with my last statement, but I couldn't help but poke the bear. "I'm only watching out for you. What do you really know about him other than that he's attracted to you?"

"Steven, you know that you're my best friend and that you're always going to mean a lot to me, but we're not little kids anymore." I didn't know how to explain it, but for some reason instead of comforting me by reminding me that I was her best friend, it had the opposite affect. I couldn't really explain what I thought about Jackie without sounding like a complete pansy, even in my own mind, but there had always been something about her that made everything around me better and she didn't even know it, but I wasn't going to tell her that because I didn't want to make shit awkward between the two of us. "I really like him. I'm comfortable around him." It felt like she had punched me in the stomach with that statement, and I didn't know why. I mean, the feeling was foreign to me, something I hadn't felt before, and I didn't like what it could possibly imply.

"Then why the fuck are you asking for my opinion? It's clear to me that you've already made up your mind about him, so why the hell are you asking for my advice?" I knew the moment I said those words that I had hurt her feelings. It hadn't been my intention to say that to her, but the words had slipped out before I had a chance to stop them. "Jackie, I'm sorry. I didn't mean it."

She kept avoiding my eyes, and I knew that she wasn't going to forget what I'd said anytime soon. "Steven, I think you should go." Her voice shook and I couldn't tell if it was out of anger or if it was out of sadness, but either way it broke my heart. "I'll call you tomorrow." I pulled myself off of her bed reluctantly, throwing her teddy bear to the side, and started walking towards her.

"You know that I didn't mean it the way that it came out." I opened my arms towards her, silently asking her for a hug which she reluctantly walked into.

"Yeah, I know you didn't." She took a deep breath before tightening her grip on me. "I have to start getting ready for my date with Noah. Do you want to stick around, or are you going to head over to Eric's basement?" I tightened my hold on her for a moment before letting go and walking towards her bedroom door, there was a part of me that wanted to stay and see what she was wearing to meet with him, but then the other part of me knew that it was in the dicktard's best interest if I wasn't around when it came time for him to pick her up.

"I think I'll head over to Foreman's house, you can go ahead and meet all of us there after your date. Good luck." She laughed lightly at my sour expression.

"Thank you, Steven."

"Anything for you, Doll." She smiled at me brightly, the same way she always did whenever I used the nickname that I'd started using for her years before. I walked out of her house without another word, heading straight for the sidewalk and kicking a can with a grunt of anger before continuing on my way to Foreman's house.

I didn't really understand why the fuck I was getting so defensive with Jackie. She was my friend, my best friend, and I had always been extremely protective of her. She knew that, so I couldn't understand why she was pitching a fit. All I was doing was warning her about the little prick who had been walking around school, shamelessly flirting with her and touching her like she belonged to him. That shit was not okay, but for some fucking reason she actually seemed to like it.

She should have spoken to Donna about it instead of coming to me in the first place. I still couldn't understand why the hell she was getting so fucking upset with me. She's the one who came to me for advice about the idiot. I was just giving her my honest opinion on the matter. He wasn't good enough for her. He didn't deserve anything from her, but for some reason she wanted to give him an opportunity.

She wasn't supposed to be looking forward to going out on a date with that little shit, she was supposed to be going out on a date with me.

Wait, that didn't come out right.

I meant…

Oh, fuck.


End file.
